HYDERABAD: As many as 200 artisans working in Genco, Transco and Discom were terminated from service on the first day of the strike by the employees of power utilities on Tuesday. There are about 22,500 artisans working in power utilities in the State. But, only 20 per cent of them went on strike on Tuesday. Those who were terminated included Telangana Vidyut Employees Union General Secretary S Sailu and Grade-1 Artisan Union office bearer J Sivasankar.
“The union leaders were terminated for participating, instigating and provoking other co-employees to participate in the strike, which was declared as ‘illegal’, constitutes grave ‘misconduct’ on their part,” the orders issued by power utilities said.
The services of artisans are mainly utilised at fuse-off-call offices and central breakdown (CBD) wing. However, the management on Tuesday gave a final warning to those who are on strike to join duties from Wednesday. Otherwise, all those who are on strike will be terminated.
“We will remove the rest of the artisans if they failed to attend to duties,” TS Transco and Genco CMD D Prabhakar Rao said. After a review meeting with officials concerned, Prabhakar Rao said that the artisans strike had no impact on power generation and distribution.
“There were no interruptions in power supply. All artisans working at various power generations of TS Genco attended the duties. However, only 80 per cent of artisans, who are attached to TS Transco and Discoms, attended duties. The strike would be considered as ‘misconduct’ as ESMA was in force,” he said.